History Channel Documentary on Nixon Praised by NYT
“Nixon: A Presidency Revealed” is the title of a documentary appearing on the History Channel tonight, and it immediately invites the question: What, really, is left to be revealed? Was John Dean secretly a woman? Were H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman actually receiving their orders from Pluto? Was it because of some previously unknown affiliation with strange fashion cultists that Spiro T. Agnew wore ties with polka dots the size of half-dollars? And, in the absence of such disclosures, what conceivable transgressions committed by the Nixon White House would surprise us even now?
Scholarship of the Nixon years, beginning with “The Time of Illusion,” Jonathan Schell’s brilliant 1975 account of the 37th presidency, has hardly suffered from insufficient attention, but this latest History Channel effort is no less gripping for its reliance on the well-known details of Nixonian pathology. Richard M. Nixon was, in the most superficial terms, a celebrity gone wild, who has provided the American public with mesmerizing television ever since the famous “Checkers” speech of his vice presidential candidacy in 1952, cunningly orchestrated to preserve his precarious place on the Eisenhower ticket in the midst of financial scandal.
“Nixon: A Presidency Revealed” retains the same perverse pleasure of an “E! True Hollywood Story,” on, say, Ryan O’Neal, one you may feel inclined to watch even if you happen to be well versed in all of his misbehaviors.
Such a comparison is not meant to suggest that “Nixon: A Presidency Revealed” lacks thoughtfulness or sobriety, because it is steeped in both.
Read entire article at NYT
Scholarship of the Nixon years, beginning with “The Time of Illusion,” Jonathan Schell’s brilliant 1975 account of the 37th presidency, has hardly suffered from insufficient attention, but this latest History Channel effort is no less gripping for its reliance on the well-known details of Nixonian pathology. Richard M. Nixon was, in the most superficial terms, a celebrity gone wild, who has provided the American public with mesmerizing television ever since the famous “Checkers” speech of his vice presidential candidacy in 1952, cunningly orchestrated to preserve his precarious place on the Eisenhower ticket in the midst of financial scandal.
“Nixon: A Presidency Revealed” retains the same perverse pleasure of an “E! True Hollywood Story,” on, say, Ryan O’Neal, one you may feel inclined to watch even if you happen to be well versed in all of his misbehaviors.
Such a comparison is not meant to suggest that “Nixon: A Presidency Revealed” lacks thoughtfulness or sobriety, because it is steeped in both.